Personas enable clear understanding of the different users of a product and their goals, problems and backgrounds. The goals help to move the focus away from features onto what users are actually trying to accomplish and what users will ultimately use to evaluate the product. The problems highlight pain points and conflicts and offer opportunities for innovation and delighting users. The personas provide a way to summarize and communicate research.

All of this information is useful for making future decisions and tradeoffs, defining the styling and vocabulary used, and bringing a user’s perspective to all aspects of design. Personas are also an effective way for a development team to discover empathy for who their users are. We can say we are designing for a nurse, medical assistant or doctor, but when we define a persona with the context of what they are doing and why, it helps a development team understand the user as a person, and it increases the passion and value in what they are developing.

The personas in the library were built through a collaboration of EHRA members, industry groups, clinicians and others who have in-depth knowledge related to the development and use of health information and technology.

These personas are being made available with the hope that they will make a positive impact on the development and implementation of all health information and technology products.

Organizations are encouraged to use these personas as a resource in their development work in order to provide new insight into their users or augment personas their teams already have.